At The Movies: A father’s love transforms horror into heart in My Daughter Is A Zombie

My Daughter Is A Zombie (NC16)

114 minutes, opens on Aug 28
★★★★☆

The story: When a zombie virus strikes, tiger trainer Jung-hwan (Cho Jung-seok) tries to escape the city with his daughter Soo-a (Choi Yu-ri), but an attack leaves the girl infected. The government orders that all carriers of the virus must be captured and killed. The desperate father sneaks his daughter into his quiet rural home town, hoping to keep her safe while he trains her to be more docile using techniques he has used on big cats.

In British film-maker Edgar Wright’s cult horror-comedy Shaun Of The Dead (2004), the title character, played by Simon Pegg, is on his usual morning walk to a nearby shop.

He is oblivious to the shambling, moaning zombies around him, because he assumes his neighbours are being their usual selves – drugged, drunk or surly.

That passing joke becomes a central theme of this South Korean film, which blends comedy with a heart-warming family message, making for an entertaining package. Also, it does not forget that zombie movies should be scary.

At its heart, My Daughter Is A Zombie is a story of a dad going on the run to keep his child safe. Imagine the premise of post-apocalyptic drama series The Last Of Us (2023 to present) retooled as a comedy.

This movie universalises the parental predicament: Soo-a has zombie fever, but she could be any child with a stigmatising disability.

Director Pil Gam-sung, in adapting Lee Yun-chang’s webtoon, plays on the friction between what society thinks zombies are – irredeemable monsters – and what Soo-a is like in reality.

When she is at her worst, she can be feral. But when she is at her best, after receiving love and training from her father and grandmother Bam-soon (Lee Jung-eun), she might be someone with a cognitive disability.

The sympathetic way the story explores her plight gives the film its warm, beating heart.

The villagers poking their noses into Jung-hwan’s secret could have been depicted as nosy bumpkins, but Pil extends the same generosity towards them as he does to Soo-a.

They are that way because almost every resident is elderly, so when they hear that Jung-hwan’s daughter is in town, she becomes a precious and much-talked-about source of rejuvenation.

The web of lies spun by Jung-hwan becomes thicker – and funnier – when he meets his old flame Yeon-hwa (Cho Yeo-jeong), an anti-zombie vigilante.

Veteran actress Lee – who, like Cho, is best known to international audiences as a cast member from Oscar-winning film Parasite (2019) – steals the show as Bam-soon. Her earthy comic presence as the grandmother, applying conventional Asian child-rearing methods to an unconventional child, anchors the film.

Hot take: This moving zombie comedy successfully transforms a potentially horrifying premise into a touching family story about acceptance and love.